Positron emission tomography (PET) generates data that represent the distribution of positron-emitting nuclides, or tracers, within the body of a patient. The distribution of the tracers may indicate the physiological function properties of the patient's organ. Data acquired from a PET scanner may undergo tomographic reconstruction before being displayed to a user.
In order to visualize a specific region of the patient's body, the reconstructed PET data may be interpolated to generate a localized image. However, traditional interpolation methods may be disadvantageous for interpolating reconstructed PET data, especially when interpolating PET data reconstructed with edge-preserving regularized reconstruction method. For example, interpolation methods such as nearest point interpolation and linear interpolation may degrade image resolution and blur the edges of imaging objects. Other interpolation method such as cubic interpolation may preserve the image resolution. However, cubic interpolation may introduce artifacts around high contrast imaging object. For example, cubic interpolation may generate negative values around the sharp, high contrast object in the PET image. As such, when the interpolated PET image is displayed in gray scale, the negative values introduces artifact adjacent to the high contrast object.